SCALZO: 'There are things more important than basketball'

Joe Scalzo @jscalzoREP

Wednesday

Feb 21, 2018 at 10:17 PMFeb 21, 2018 at 10:36 PM

With hearts and minds elsewhere, Jackson played a boys basketball game on Wednesday night

Early on Tuesday morning, hours before his basketball team was supposed to celebrate senior night, Jaret Pallotta was working in the main office at Jackson High School when he heard something bad was happening at the middle school.

Pallotta may be the most famous student in Jackson's system right now — the star quarterback who led the Polar Bears to back-to-back football playoff appearances and hit the biggest shot of last year's state basketball final — but at that moment, he was just a teenager hoping his little sister was OK.

Pallotta tried texting her — she didn't have her phone, so she didn't respond — so, like everyone else, he was stuck waiting, hoping and praying that it wasn't another Parkland. Or another Columbine. Or another Sandy Hook.

It wasn't. But it was still a tragedy.

Even when it's just one kid with one gun, it's still terrifying. It's still one kid too many.

"When we found out what it was, and we knew that the kids were relatively safe, I definitely relaxed a little bit," Pallotta said. "My mom texted me that she was all right, but it wasn't until about 2 o'clock that she finally got home."

Pallotta is part of a generation that has grown up with this. It's been nearly 19 years since Columbine. Past generations dove under their desks to prepare for nuclear war, this one goes through school lockdown drills.

And yet ...

"Everyone thinks it's not going to happen here," Pallotta said. "Then, when it does, it definitely makes everyone more cautious."

Pallotta's senior night was rescheduled for Wednesday. Other than playing inside a half-empty gymnasium, it felt like a normal game. There were three policemen inside the gym — boys basketball games typically have between two and four at every game, depending on the crowd, so that's normal — and outside of one Ellet fan holding up a sign saying "We stand with Jackson" during the national anthem, no outsider would have known something had happened to the community on Tuesday.

The Polar Bears looked a little more ragged than usual, which could have been because they didn't practice on Tuesday or it could have been because Ellet is a fast, athletic team that gives everyone trouble.

It also could have been because the Polar Bears were thinking about things other than basketball, which was just fine with head coach Tim Debevec.

"We preach to our guys family first," he said after the 57-51 victory. "It's family, then maybe school or your health or your faith. Basketball is maybe fifth. We just tried to be there for each other and try to be positive role models for our kids.

"I'm proud of our coaches and our players staying focused during a hard time. There are things more important than basketball, and I think the guys handled it really well."

There's a line in the movie "Life is Beautiful" that says "Nothing is more necessary than the unnecessary."

Basketball games aren't that important, which is what makes them so important.

"It was a little weird to play, but I thought it brought us together as a community tonight," Pallotta said afterward. "It's a good thing to have a game like this the day after it happened. Obviously, our community was really shook yesterday, so an event like this to bring everyone together was really good."

On Thursday morning, Jackson will have another event to bring everyone together: a prayer meeting for Fellowship of Christian Athletics.

"It's a great time to have FCA," said Pallotta, who is the group's president. "We definitely want everyone from the middle school or the high school to come.

"When something like this happens, it makes people more aware of the way they treat the people around them. You never really know what someone is going through, so at the end of the day, you've got to treat everyone the same and hope things like this can stop happening."

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